Pd James Quotes

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell. ~ P.D. James

Her aunt and uncle worked fifteen hours a day in their desperate attempt to keep the corner shop in profit, and their Sundays were marked by exhaustion. The moral code by which they lived was that of cleanliness, respectability and prudence. Religion was for those who had the time for it, a middle-class indulgence. ~ P.D. James

When I re-read the Odyssey, it felt like I was reading PD James or Minette Walters - you feel that you are sharing in something that hundreds of millions of people have read with love, and I think that this is worth holding onto. It is not a matter of canonical texts or elitism, which the universities are trying to make us wary about. It is about shared language and metaphor and experience and imagery and that is all good. ~ Robert Dessaix

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing. ~ P.D. James

One alters the past to form the future but there is a real significance to the pattern which finally appears, which resists all further change. ~ James Salter

I always believed that social science was a progressive profession because it was the powerful who had the most to hide about how the world actually worked and if you could show how the world actually worked it would always have a de-masking and a subversive effect on the powerful. I don't think that's quite true, but it seems to me it's not bad as a point of departure anyway. ~ James C. Scott

I'm just saying that his card-burning would have meant far more, on the day he did it, if he hadn't already incinerated his life. ~ David James Duncan

them in," he said in a gravelly voice. A minute ~ James Dashner

after we cleared the tunnel at Treasure Island, a panicky ~ James Patterson

Paul screamed out words as he struggled to stand. Good ... gracious ... mercy ... mama ... you people ... are FAT! ~ James Dashner

Over a wide field of our economy it is still the better course to rely on the nineteenth century's "hidden hand" than to thrust clumsy bureaucratic fingers into its sensitive mechanism. In particular, we cannot afford to damage its mainspring, freedom of competitive enterprise. ~ John James Cowperthwaite

The first think I did when I found out I was a finalist, was, I don't remember, because it felt like it was an out of body experience. ~ James Durbin

He groaned and leaned his forehead against hers, "You drive me mad, Elizabeth. I dream I am holding you every night. I wake in a sweat, aching and disappointed. Dreams of you have replaced my nightmares, but they leave me empty and restless and my body on fire. I can't even remember why we argued. I don't care how things went wrong. ~ Judith James

He rarely saw a doorway without advancing through it as if he owned it. Since he owned a good many doorways, he would have pointed out that this was a reasonable assumption. ~ Eloisa James

I talked some more, let my tongue wag, let my mind run free, and it felt pretty good. It's a wonderful thing to have somebody in your life whom you can say absolutely anything to. Not to have that is almost unthinkable to me. ~ James Patterson

Information is the most valuable commodity in the world today and this business is about giving people access to information that is relevant to their lives. ~ James Murdoch

Unless there comes to the Nation a greater emancipation than Lincoln's Proclamation effected, it is doomed, it is bound to go down. ~ Francis James Grimke

Theo continued weeping, and with each tear, he marched his way into manhood. ~ Steven James Taylor

Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will. ~ James Monroe

A human life was measured out in bouquets, was it not? New mothers received them. So did graduating seniors, young lovers, blushing brides, and the dead. A flower woman was time's avatar, colorizing the hours, perfuming fleeting instants. ~ James K. Morrow

When you make movies, I find that I never have time to go to the movies and enjoy movies like I used to, because I'm so movied out, right, I'm so filmed out that the last thing that I wanna do is with the little spare time that I have is stick in a dark room and watch more stuff on the screen. ~ James Wan

Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer." Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.," was engraved upon it, with the date "1884." It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry - dignified, solid, and reassuring. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can. ~ James Thurber

Jay-Z isn't actually any better than James Joyce even though more people understand him. I'm more interested in what's meaningful within the lives of individuals. And fiction will always be central to the lives of certain people, which is all that matters. ~ Matthew Specktor

Always take the job, pursue the life, and have the friends that allow you to have as much freedom as possible. ~ James Altucher

The bonding ceremony is a walk through our peers, a family member or friend usually leads those to be bonded down that path with a white laced leash."

"You want me to wear a collar!" He placed a hand around his neck instinctively.

Lorn lifted a dark eyebrow. "The leash doesn't go around your neck." He glanced between Kallen's legs. ~ James Cox

Miller and the new man nodded to each other. The girl tugged at her father's sleeve, demanding his attention. Miller looked at her - dark eyes, pale hair, smooth skin. She was already too tall to be mistaken for an Earth child, her limbs longer and thinner. Her skin had the pink flush of Belter babies, which came with the pharmaceutical cocktail that assured that their muscles and bones would grow strong. Miller saw the father notice his attention. Miller smiled and nodded toward the kid. How ~ James S.A. Corey

I am a musicologist, a doctor of music. Therefore I listened to, studied and analysed a lot of music. I also enjoy metaphors, the art of quoting and of cycles. ~ James Horner

This thing called Contrmporary America--and its obsession with televisions, game systems, and computers_has gone a littlr far if you ask me. Some call it the Information Age, but I'd tend to say it's more the Sitting-on-one's-butt-and-letting-other-people-do-the-thinking-for-you Age. ~ James Patterson

- He is dead, she said at length. He died when he was only seventeen. Isn't it a terrible thing to die so young as that? ~ James Joyce

Monsoon Love is a love story with a few comic twists. The idea for this story came to me when I went into the local town of Pokhara with a friend to buy his son a birthday present. We had just arrived at the shops when a heavy down pour began, and as we had arrived on his motorbike and didn't have raincoats or umbrellas so we had to wait for the rain to stop. We were standing under a awning watching the street while we waited, and I noticed this very beautiful young woman walk past me dressed in a t-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled half up her legs, but the way she held her umbrella made it impossible to see her face, though with the nice body she had her face must have been just as lovely. Then I though, imagine some guy stuck working in an office, and seeing a view like that every day of the same woman, and falling in love with her despite not seeing her face. ~ Andrew James Pritchard

We've got to be as clear-headed about human beings as possible, because we are still each other's only hope. ~ James Baldwin

If you are going to tell a story about a child going missing, it's going to have similarities with a real life child going missing. ~ James Nesbitt

My day starts with Radio 4's Today live or 'listen again' wherever I am in the world, thanks to digital radio - I even have an app on my iPhone that receives it. ~ Peter James

You can't think in sound bytes. ~ James Cook

Truth is something that happens to an idea. ~ William James

What did you do?" Fred asked. "There was a button," Holden said. "I pushed it." "Jesus Christ. That really is how you go through life, isn't it?" "But ~ James S.A. Corey

The passion for travelling is, I believe, instinctive in some natures. We have seen men persevere in their enterprises against the most formidable obstacles; and, without means or friends, and even ignorant of the languages of the various countries through which they passed, pursue their perilous journeys into remote places, until, like the knight in the Arabian tale, they succeeded in snatching a memorial from every shrine they visited. ~ James Holman

If you were given the chance to be reborn after your death, buy you could only come back as a squirrel, would you complain? ~ Peter James West

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip. ~ James M. Cain

Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera. ~ James Stephens

The problem is, getting business is part of the business. It's like a ritual with these guys: 'Hey, how 'bout those Club' " – the bad male impression was back – " 'let's play some golf, smoke some cigars. Here's my penis, there's yours – yep, they appear to be about the same size – okay, let's do some deals.' "
When the woman seated at the next table threw them a disapproving look over the foam of her jumbo-sized cappuccino, Laney leaned in toward Payton. "Let's use our inside voices, please, when using the p-word," she whispered chidingly. ~ Julie James

Save the love we pay to heaven, there is none purer, holier, than that a virtuous woman feels for him she would cleave through life to. Sisters part from sisters, brothers from brothers, children from their parents, but such woman from the husband of her choice, never! ~ James Sheridan Knowles

I had to say to myself, 'Don't write the music. Let the music write itself. ~ Michael James Jackson

And after four years, I thoroughly enjoy Hawaii and the success of the show. ~ James MacArthur

For in the immediate world, everything is to be discerned, for him who can discern it, and central and simply, without either dissection into science, or digestion into art, but with the whole of consciousness, seeking to perceive it as it stands: so that the aspect of a street in sunlight can roar in the heart of itself as a symphony, perhaps as no symphony can: and all of consciousness is shifted from the imagined, the revisive, to the effort to perceive simply the cruel radiation of what is. ~ James Agee

It is certain that every class is interested in [educational] establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity. ~ James Madison

I mean that everything this afternoon has been too beautiful, and that perhaps everything together will never be so right again. I'm very glad therefore you've been a part of it. ~ Henry James

These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet. ~ David Nicholls

People don't have any mercy. They tear you limb from limb, in the name of love. Then, when you're dead, when they've killed you by what they made you go through, they say you didn't have any character. They weep big, bitter tears - not for you. For themselves, because they've lost their toy. ~ James Baldwin

Bite my laughters, drink my tears. Pore into me, volumes, spell me stark and spill me swooning, I just don't care what my thwarters think. ~ James Joyce

In regards to your love life, you're just entering into a whole of pain if you talk about it. If you've never said anything, there are no sound bites to haunt you when you're crying into a box of Kleenex after it all goes wrong. ~ Lily James

Music is an important part of my writing process. ~ Peter James